technology

Songza’s Elias Roman

What are you in the mood to listen to? That’s the question at the heart of Songza, the music-recommendation service that hopes to stake its claim in an industry currently dominated by Pandora and Spotify. After selling its online music store Amie Street to Amazon, C.E.O. Elias Roman and his three friends from Brown University—Peter Asbill, Elliott Breece, and Eric Davich—relaunched Songza as Music Concierge, which helps more than 4.7 million monthly active users discover expert-curated playlists. Earlier this month, following the announcement of another $3.8 million in funding, Songza released the third iteration of the app, complete with an overhauled user interface. We spoke to Roman about how his iPhone 4S keeps him on the forefront of the evolving digital-music industry.

Phone: Black iPhone 4S.

Case: TuneBand.

“It rocks. Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s a rubber case that protects the phone and makes it really easy to grip. But for a few hours a week, I slip an armband through the back of the case and presto, it’s a great iPhone armband.”

“I love exercising, but I’m not great about taking the time to design fresh workouts for myself. I use Fitness Buddy because they pair a very comprehensive set of pre-made workouts with animated gifs that detail the proper form for each exercise. All I have to do is show up at the gym, open the app, and select what I want to work on, and the rest of the workout is taken care of.”

“This very simple, very intuitive to-do-list app makes keeping track of what I’m trying to accomplish on a given day really easy. I’ve tried a number of other productivity apps and found that I end up spending more time learning how to use them productively.”

“It makes screen sharing really, really easy without any need to schedule the screen share in advance. I’ve been so aggressive in using it for the screen shares I’ve done that a lot of folks I know use it for screen shares they’re presenting to me.”

“For anyone involved in beta-testing mobile apps, you know the pain of trying reproduce a bug you are reporting to your engineering team. With CBConsole, you can just use the app normally and simply send its activity logs any time something notable happens.”

“Sonos allows me to control a hi-fi wireless speaker system that covers my entire apartment, including the balcony. The guilty-pleasure part is that with Sonos, I often have different [Songza] playlists on in different rooms, even though my apartment isn’t even that big. And that’s just baller.”

“The idea that I can spend a few minutes of downtime in the subway training my brain at problem solving, memory, spatial recognition, and concentration is really appealing. I don’t know how good I am at it, but I felt it was going well enough to upgrade to the paid version.”

Clean inbox? Yes.

“As much as possible I try to make one of three decisions about a new e-mail: One: delete it. The busier we all get, the higher the threshold becomes for a given e-mail to be worth reading or responding to. Two: respond right away. Or three: add the to-do of the e-mail to Wunderlist and archive the e-mail.”

Text or call? Text.

“My preference chain is: e-mail, then text, then call. If the issue is complex, a call is usually the best way to address it, though. It’s 11 a.m., and I’ve placed 17 calls so far.”

Remaining battery: Thirty-three percent.

“I recharge at least once a day because I’m constantly on my phone. I also bought a laptop case that can store a charge and then charge your phone whenever you need it so I don’t have to spend every moment of business travel wondering where my next electricity fix will come from.”